Writing News for the Sunshine State & the Solar System
http://www.northfloridawriters.org/
https://www.facebook.com/groups/NorthFloridaWriters/
Editor: Howard Denson
August 2016

STUFF FROM A WRITER’S QUILL

Criticism – however valid or intellectually
engaging – tends to get in the way of a writer who has
anything personal to say. A tightrope walker may require
practice, but if he starts a theory of equilibrium he will
lose grace (and probably fall off).

– J.R.R. Tolkien

In this issue:

Stuff
(and links) from hither and yon

In defense of Rudyard Kipling and ‘The
Jungle Books’

Stop. Using. Periods. Period.

Interview with Fannie Flagg about WASP
novel

Ten rules for writing fiction

How the Writer Listens: Svetlana Alexievich

1964 Playboy interview with Vladimir Nabokov

Language Could Diagnose Parkinson’s, ALS and
Schizophrenia before Lab Tests

The Last Bookstore, Symbol of L.A.’s Literary
Renaissance

Virginia Woolf on How Our Illusions Keep Us Alive

How Does the Language of Headlines Work? The
Answer May Surprise You

Former BBC head Mark Thompson on Trump, Orwell
and what’s gone wrong with political language

Jeff
Guo is advising you NOT to use periods . . . at least in
texting. If you text and use periods, you are signaling
hostility, aggressiveness, etc. Of course, as he mentions,
at one time in writing, there were no periods, commas,
quotation marks, question marks, or apostrophes, not even
any spaces.
Thewriterjustwrotewhateverhehadtosayandthereaderstrivedtomakesenseofit.

A
group was meeting at the café made famous by Fannie Flagg in
“Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle-Stop Cafe,” and, when
the author called for a recipe, she learned they were the
women survivors from World War II who had flown planes that
would be shipped to the male pilots. The WASP story grew
into her novel, “All-Girl Filling
Station's Last Reunion.” Ms. Flagg was born
Patricia Neal, a name she couldn’t use on TV and film
because it had been registered by the Academy Award-winning
actress. She tells how she chose the name Fannie Flagg. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5WM7ad5WxE

Interviewer
Alvin Toffler asked Vladimir Nabokov,the
author of “Lolita,” about the influence of Freud and got
this response: “The ordeal itself is
much too silly and disgusting to be contemplated even as a
joke. Freudism and all it has tainted with its grotesque
implications and methods, appear to me to be one of the vilest
deceits practiced by people on themselves and on others. I
reject it utterly, along with a few other medieval items still
adored by the ignorant, the conventional, or the very sick.” (Minor point about the centerfold
in Jan. 1964, if she was between 18 and 22 back then, she
would be 70-75 today.) http://reprints.longform.org/playboy-interview-vladimir-nabokov

Alexander
Nazaryan is delighted with his discovery of The Last
Bookstore in Los Angeles. Says he: “The Last Bookstore is a
potent symbol of the resurgent literary fortunes of Los
Angeles. It has also become one of the finest independent
bookstores in the nation, rivaling acknowledged greats like
the Elliott Bay Book Company (Seattle), Pegasus Books
(Berkeley), Politics & Prose (where else but Washington,
D.C.?), Tattered Cover (Denver), Greenlight (Brooklyn) and
Three Lives & Company (Manhattan).”http://www.newsweek.com/last-bookstore-symbol-las-literary-renaissance-491611

Virginia Woolf

on How Our Illusions

Keep Us Alive

Maria
Popova opens her essay on Virginia Woolf by quoting from the
English author’s “Orlando”: “Life is a dream. ’Tis waking that
kills us. He who robs us of our dreams robs us of our life.”

Ms.
Popova says that “long before psychologists began exploring
the curious cognitive mechanism of how our delusions keep us
sane, even before the poet W.H. Auden contemplated the crucial
difference between false and true enchantment, Virginia Woolf
explored the powerful positive side of illusions in Orlando: A
Biography—her groundbreaking 1928 novel, aptly considered ‘the
longest and most charming love letter in literature,’ which
gave us Woolf’s fiction-veiled insight into perennial truths
about the elasticity of time, the fluidity of gender, and our
propensity for self-doubt in creative work.” https://www.brainpickings.org/2016/08/25/virginia-woolf-orlando-illusions/

In
London’s Daily Telegraph, Jonathon Green reviews Mark
Thompson’s “Enough Said: What’s Gone Wrong with the Politics
of Language?” Thompson, the former head of the British
Broadcasting Company, is now the chief executive at The New
York Times.

Green
wishes Thompson’s book had included H. L. Mencken, who said
this about U.S. President Warren G. Harding (a journalist
and publisher, by the way):

“He
writes the worst English that I have ever encountered. It
reminds me of a string of wet sponges; it reminds me of
tattered washing on the line; it reminds me of stale bean
soup, of college yells, of dogs barking idiotically through
endless nights. It is so bad that a sort of grandeur creeps
into it. It drags itself out of the dark abysm of pish, and
crawls insanely up the topmost pinnacle of posh. It is rumble
and bumble. It is flap and doodle. It is balder and dash.”

Every
decade has its Cassandras predicting that society or an
academic discipline is about to crash and burn. Martha
Nussbaum’s “Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs the
Humanities” predicts doom if we don’t change our ways. A
rebuttal is this essay by Gary Saul Morson in Commentary. He
argues that students will stay away from courses that are
poorly taught. He gives suggestions about what’s wrong and
how to change the system.

Freelancer
Noah Berlatsky says, “Academics
don’t need to be elitist, careerist, or corrupted by
postmodernism to write badly. Most people, most of the
time, write badly. Writing well is hard. Celebrate those
who have mastered it, and have some sympathy for the rest
of us, laboring for competence one keystroke at a time.”

The
New Yorker looks back at one of the important pieces of
journalism in the 20th Century: John Hersey’s
“Hiroshima,” which the magazine published seventy years ago.
Russell Shorto describes how Hersey read Thornton Wilder’s
novel, “The Bridge over San Luis Rey,” and realized a
similar approach could enable Hiroshima survivors to tell
their own story without authorial intrusions.

Rev.
Clint Archer of Hillcrest Baptist Church explores the way
that novelists and ministers produce their words. He says
thriller author Jeffrey Archer writes in longhand, using up
a half dozen ballpoint pens for each novel. Some ministers
prefer to stick with cursive. Rev. Archer, however, finds
there are several practical reasons for using a word
processing program (PC or tablet) to save the sermons. http://thecripplegate.com/paper-or-plastic-why-i-hate-handwritten-notes/

FLORIDA HERITAGE BOOK
FESTIVAL

OFFERS WRITER’S
CONFERENCE ON SEPT. 16;

FREE BOOK FAIR SLATED
ON SEPT. 17

The Florida Heritage Book Festival wants writers to
join them Friday, Sept. 16, at St. Augustine’s Flagler College
for a day of workshops dedicated to the working writer
committed to improving his or her craft through face-to-face
guidance by writing professionals. The conference is designed
to help all writers, whether they are veterans or emerging
talent.

The Festival begins Sept. 15 and ends on Sept. 17.

On the day of the writers’ conference, two sessions
will run concurrently in each time slot.

9- 10 a.m. Friday, Sept. 16

Creating Characters Who Stand the Test of Time (Michael
Morris) This workshop will focus on character development,
capturing oral history and research for fiction, with an
emphasis on the historical genre.

Finding Bigfoot & Developing Scenes (Joe Gisondi)
The author of “Monster Trek: The Obsessive Search for Bigfoot”
is also a professor of journalism who has traveled to eight
locations across the country, trekking into swamps, mountains,
state parks, and remote woods with people in search of bigfoot
as well as fame, fortune, adventure, and shared camaraderie.
This session will show attendees how to develop scenes before,
during and after spending time in a locale through research,
interviews and observations.

10-11 a.m. Friday, Sept. 16

How to Let the Necessity of Plot Guide Your Writing
(John Dufresne)

Bookstores & Beyond: Marketing in the Age of Amazon
(Brad and Darlyn Kuhn) Learn how to brand yourself and sell
your work from two writers who make a living at it.

An author’s choice of point of view not only helms a
narrative, but determines how that narrative will be imagined
by the reader and how it will make the reader feel. Susanna
Daniel will discuss how point of view shapes character,
structure, and language in each of her three novels, and how
to access the most vivid, astute, and compelling point of view
in your own work.

12:30-1 p.m. Friday, Sept. 16 Book Signing
for Susanna Daniel

1-2 p.m. Friday, Sept. 16 Writing
Tools: 50 Essential Strategies for Every Writer (Roy Peter
Clark) Based upon a book by that title, Roy Peter Clark will
reveal the secrets of the writing process, from nuts and bolts
to special effects to blueprints for stories to useful habits.
These tools are proven to spark an immediate improvement in
your prose.

Crafting the Character Arc (Jennie Jarvis) Many writers
think that, just because they have their basic structure in
place, their stories are destined to succeed. The problem with
many narratives, however, can often come in those places
between the plot points. While many books on the craft of
writing state that characters need to be three dimensional and
change, a beginning writer isn’t always sure how to turn these
rather conceptual ideas into something a bit more concrete.
Jennie Jarvis will detail a step-by-step practical guide for
beginning writers to use in order to ensure they create
characters both dynamic and engaging.

2 – 3 p.m. Friday, Sept. 16

From Self-Published Author to Number One National Best
Seller: The Art and Craft of Writing a Mystery Novel (Terrell
Griffin)

Our American Lives: Fact/Fiction/Film and Craft
(Cecilia Milanes)

Blending genres is a challenging endeavor that can
provide both exhilarating freedom and productive foundations
and forms. By revisiting home movies, writers may find
inspiration for fiction, memoir, and poetry–sometimes all
fruitfully inhabiting one piece.

He will various poems “about” writing, talk about his
writing habits, and describe his experiences during a long
career.

Storybrain: What Recent Discoveries in Neuroscience
Mean for Fiction Writers (John Henry Fleming) Thanks to recent
scientific developments, we are getting a real-time look at
how the brain responds to stories. The results are fascinating
and surprising; what do they mean for fiction writers? How
might our new understanding of the brain influence the craft
of fiction? This session will teach new ways of thinking about
one’s stories and gain craft advice to help the aspiring
writer to create a vivid and meaningful experience in the
minds of the readers.

4 -5 p.m. Friday, Sept. 16 A Good Title
is Not Hard to Find (Robin Lippincott)

The speaker has been a teacher of fiction writing for
many years and concludes that a lot of writers aren’t very
good at titling their work, and yet the significance of a
compelling title that fits cannot be underestimated. This
lecture will explore why titles are so important, and also
some guidelines by which to avoid bad titles, as well as how
to create effective and meaningful titles. Along the way,
we’ll look at some good (and even great) examples, as well as
some bad ones.

Free to
All Book Festival on Saturday, Sept. 17

The Florida
Heritage Book Festival will offer a day of free author
presentations on Saturday.. This year’s mix of bestselling
authors from a range of genres will force tough decisions
about which presentations to attend. Check out the festival schedule.

Need new
books? Over 70 writers, publishers and book stores will be
available at Saturday’s Festival Marketplace for hourly
drawings, signings and readings.Authors
and vendors at the book festival will include the following:

North
Florida Writers members at the August quarterly meeting
voted on two measures important to the organization:

First,
they reinstated dues, but at a reduced rate of $20 a year
(for all previous categories). The dues will begin with the
2017 calendar year.

Second,
the NFW decided to go from quarterly meetings to six
meetings a year beginning in 2017: January, March, May,
July, September, and November.

For
2016, the last meeting will be Saturday, Nov. 12, in the
meeting room of the Riverside-Avondale Watson Realty branch
(on the corner of Herschel and San Juan). The meeting will
start at 1 or 2 p.m. (to be confirmed later), depending on
how late the realty office is office.

The
November speaker will be Sohrab Homi Fracis, whose upcoming
book is “Go Home,” a novel about pressures on immigrants
during the Iranian hostage crisis.

The
meeting will also feature critiquing.

BOOKMARK PUTS
SPOTLIGHT

ON
THE WEIRDNESS

OF FLORIDA ON SEPT. 17

Owner
Rona Brinlee says The BookMark (220 1st St., Neptune
Beach 32266) will learn from Craig Pittman how America’s
weirdest state influences the rest of the U.S. In other
months, the bookstore will host Jennifer Fosberry and Randy
Wayne White.

Every
place has its idiosyncrasies, but journalist Pittman (The
Scent of Scandal) makes a strong case for Florida being the
strangest state in the nation. He relates bizarre events with
assorted characters from Florida’s current culture and modern
history. Covering diverse topics such as politics, plastic
surgery, civil rights, Scientology, sinkholes, and NASCAR, the
author shares news reports and scandals representing the
oddity that is Florida. (This book is also featured in the
BookMark newsletter as Laura’s staff pick for this month.)

A big
event has Isabella ready to leave home at the crack of dawn.
But that’s a motion her parents are not likely to pass.If her house is going to work like a democracy,
Isabella knows what she has to do; call an assembly and
campaign her way out the door! Inspired by women who
trail-blazed their way onto the political map of America,
Isabella celebrates the women who were first to hold their
offices.

Five
hundred years ago, Spanish conquistadors planted the first
orange seeds in Florida, but now the whole industry is in
trouble.The only solution might be
somehow, somewhere, to find samples of the original root
stock. No one is better equipped to traverse the swamps and
murky back country of Florida than Hannah Smith, a tall,
strong Florida woman whose family roots go back generations.
Once word leaks out of her quest, trouble begins. There are
people who will kill to find a direct descendant of those
first seeds.

In
June, Jacksonville poet Emily K. Michael placed well in a
chapbook contest offering The Hopper's Prize for Young Poets.
The Hopper, the Vermont-based ecologically minded magazine,
published one
of her essays in
April.

This
contest called for a chapbook, a collection of 20-50 poems by
a "young poet" (under 35) who had never published a collection
before. Ms. Michael says, “So I shuffled and re-shuffled my
poems, read them to myself, read them with friends, and sent
them off.”

Her
manuscript, “Natural Compliance,” won Honorable Mention (3rd
place) in the contest. The Hopper wanted to profile her on
their website and include a poem from the collection. Their
profile features the poem "Kiwano."

September
brings temporal competitions for writers, what with college
and NFL football, so the writer needs to force time into the
calendar to make sure the keyboard isn’t being neglected. If
you want to confer inside with fellow writers, then go to
the FWA blog and check out meetings of the River City
Writers, the Clay County Writers, Writers by the Sea, the
Ancient City Writers, and the Ponte Vedra Writers.

The
Clay County Writers will again leave the Clay County Library
on Wednesday, Sept. 21, because of the election seasons, when
the meeting rooms of public libraries are already booked for
ballot training and early voting,. The group will meet instead
at Penney Farms Community Commons Room. The meeting will start
at 6 and last till 8 p.m.

Maureen
Jung, group leader, will lead a discussion on “How to Write a
Summary” and give a sneak preview of anthology stories.

Writers
may wonder how to write summaries of their essays, stories,
poems, and projects. She says, “Naturally, no single approach
works for all writers. The methods may be as diverse as the
number of writers you ask.”

Clay
County Writers is sponsored by Florida Writers Association.
Get the details on this statewide group: https://floridawriters.net/.
Monthly meetings focus on the art, craft, and business of
writing. Some meetings offer presentations by author-speakers.
Other meetings introduce practical exercises to help writers
sharpen their skills, give and receive feedback, and leave
with practical suggestions to improve their work.

A
writing workshop on a shanty boat docked on the Trout River
is beginning a new series of classes on Oct. 5-Nov. 9,
2016,according to freelance
writer and editor of Closet Books, Lynn Skapyak Harlin,
leader of the workshop.

Shanty boat Writers Workshop is
designed for beginning writers who would like to
learn new techniques, or seasoned writers who would
like to refresh these skills to improve their writing.
Fiction and nonfiction writers are welcome. Topics include:
Creating believable characters, Tips for Improving Dialogue,
Elements of Plot, How 'Show rather than Tell' works toward
clarity in all forms of writing and many other writing and
submission tips.

Members of recent classes have
won awards in the contests of the Florida First Coast
Writers' Festival and other national awards.

The evening session meets every Wednesday
from 6 to 9 p.m., and the cost of
the workshop (limited to 8 students) will be $200 for
six weeks.

Before attending a workshop all new
workshop writers must write and submit an introductory
essay according to workshop guidelines .

For more information on all
sessions forming or to reserve a space, call Ms.
Skapyak Harlin at 904.778.8000 or e-mail her at lyharlin@aol.com

WRITERS BY THE SEA TO
HEAR

MICHAEL REGINA DISCUSS

“HOW ART AND
ILLUSTRATION

TELL AND SELL A STORY”

An
illustrator-editor will speak to Amelia’s Writers by the Sea
on Thursday, Sept. 15, when the group meets at 6 p.m. at the
Amelia Island Museum of History (233 S. 3rd Street,
Fernandina Beach, FL 32034).

Michael
Regina will provide an artist’s approach to “How Art and
Illustration Tell and Sell a Story.” The speaker is an award
winning film editor, painter and illustrator, largely known
for his portraits and comics work: His online graphic novel,
From Death ‘til Now, has increased interest in his comics
work.

Aside
from developing his own projects, Regina has served as an
assistant on the last two volumes of Scholastic's popular
series, Amulet by Kazu Kibuishi. Regina received a BFA in
Painting and Drawing at the University of North Florida and
studied under several painting masters, including portrait
artist Kyle Keith.

Thanks
for sharing the update about cursive writing making a bit of a
comeback! I know someone who wrote instructions for caring for
some cats and dogs, and the caretakers couldn’t read her notes
because they were in cursive. And don’t we still need
signatures?

Joy V. Smith

author of “Strike Three” and
other books

RIP “bi-monthly”

Dear
readers:

If
you have trouble remembering what exactly is meant by, say,
“bi-weekly” or “semi-weekly,” you may have to look that up. I
wanted to make certain that our article about NFW meetings
every other month got it correctly. The rule of thumb for an
editor or writer is “When in doubt, look it up.” Was it “bi-”
or “semi-monthly”?

It
turns out that three or four respected online dictionaries
said “bi-monthly” can mean (wait for it) “meets every other
month” OR “meets twice a month.” Alas, a perfectly good
expression that once had a real meaning now has no useful
meaning. If you use it, you are inviting confusion into your
communications.

“Infer”
and “imply” are still alive and have specific meanings, but
the words are on life support and may become interchangeable.
All will be lost when there’s an English handbook entitled
“Learn ’Em Good Like Us Should.”

Howard Denson

Author of “The Wrong Stuff: Findings
of a Forensic Grammarian” and other books

WRITERS
BORN

THIS
MONTH

.

To
check out the names of writers who were born this month, go
to this website: